


Handle With Care

by buckgaybarnes



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, First Love, M/M, Magical Realism, Mutual Pining, Referenced violence, Temporary Character Death, Very Mildly Implied Sexual Content, a distinct lack of pie-making, no knowledge of the series required
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 13:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17561021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckgaybarnes/pseuds/buckgaybarnes
Summary: Hermann Gottlieb met Newton Geiszler when he was exactly twenty-four years, four months, fifteen days, two hours, and twenty-three minutes old.(OR: Hermann is a physicist who can raise the dead. Newton, ex-penpal and first crush, happens to be dead.)





	Handle With Care

**Author's Note:**

> THIS ONE IS A DOOZY!!! and has the distinct honor of being my longest newt/hermann oneshot to date (thank u to my gc for helping me with the naming)
> 
> i said you don't have to know anything about the tv show pushing daisies to enjoy this, and everything i borrowed i touch on in the fic anyway, but i'll give a little summary of it just in case (because it's a fun show! you should watch it!): 1. pie-maker can raise the dead for one minute and one minute exactly by touching them (more than one minute and someone else has to die), and can only touch them once 2. touches them a second time, dead forever 3. uses gift to solve murders with a P.I. 4. childhood crush dies, brings her back to life to stay, everything is great.......but they can never touch again!
> 
> not quite plot relevant, but feel free to imagine newt in the kind of sundresses chuck always wears in the show. it ups the reading experience imo. also: please don't try to check my math with the exact descriptions of age. i went nuts trying to make it precise and gave up since it was 3 am. should also say the narration style is a deliberate attempt to emulate the show's. just.....experience it

Hermann Gottlieb met Newton Geiszler when he was exactly twenty-four years, four months, fifteen days, two hours, and twenty-three minutes old.

It was not a normal sort of meeting, nor was it truly a meeting. The world was coming to an end at the hands of interdimensional beings rising from deep within the Pacific Ocean, and Hermann (a physicist with a fondness for abstract mathematics and melancholy films about artificial intelligence) and his father (an engineer who’d never been fond of anything in his life) were working on a solution: human-powered machines that were strong enough, and large enough, to put up a fair fight. Halfway across the world, Newton Geiszler (biologist, MIT graduate, only child, amateur musician), twenty-three years, six months, twenty-two days, four hours, and fifty-three minutes old, was also working on a solution. To defeat the monsters, Newton believed, they must first understand the monsters. (Newton had a fondness for monsters.)

He’d explained as much to Hermann in the form of a letter, sent two weeks and three hours after Dr.s Hermann and Lars Gottlieb began their work on the jaeger program, alongside glowing praise of the physicist and a fierce desire to collaborate their research. Hermann had not been sure if he fully agreed with Newton, but Newton was intelligent, and he was bold, and he was unlike anyone Hermann had ever met before (and, a brief Google search revealed, he was handsome), so Hermann wrote back. Hermann wrote back many times after that, too. So did Newton.

Hermann was twenty-five years, three days, three hours, and three minutes old when he realized he was in love with Newton Geiszler. He did not tell Newton, though he would’ve liked to, and often wondered if he should. This was not abnormal. There were many things that Hermann told Newton, but there were many more he did not. He did not tell Newton that he did not get along with his father. (Newton got along with _his_ father.) He did not tell Newton that the sweater Newton sent him for his (twenty-fifth) birthday was a size too large, nor that Hermann was allergic to the candy he’d also slipped into the package and was forced to pawn it off on his younger brothers. He did not tell Newton that, secretly, he’d doodled the name _Dr. Hermann Geiszler_ in the margins of his lab notebook more than once, alongside the highly-classified coding for the very first jaegers.

He did not tell Newton the most important thing about himself, either.

But ultimately it did not matter. Hermann and Newton often arranged to meet, but each attempt proved largely unsuccessful. Once, Newton was struck with a bad case of laryngitis three days before a conference they were both due to attend. Another, a freak snowstorm cancelled Hermann’s flight out of England. The last, a kaiju attack called them _both_ away to more important matters—Newton, dissecting new samples, and Hermann, discerning where his jaeger had failed. The universe did not want Hermann and Newton to meet, it seemed, and Hermann reasoned it was for the best. A relationship—the kind of relationship Hermann wanted—would never work out between the two of them anyway, not with an ocean between them, not with the world due to end at any moment.

Between Hermann’s jaegers and Newton’s kaiju, both men eventually became too busy to keep up their correspondence, and to their mutual dissatisfaction, their penpalship finally petered out when Hermann was sent off to Hong Kong to aid the Pans-Pacific Defense Corps.

Hermann’s feelings for Newton did not peter out.

 

* * *

 

It had been exactly three years, six months, one day, and five hours since Hermann Gottlieb received a letter from Newton Geiszler when Hermann woke to a news notification that Newton Geiszler was dead.

The article did not name Newton in any explicit terms, and Hermann would not have even read it if—when preparing his breakfast—he had not opened his phone on a whim to pass the time as his bagel toasted. _Unknown tourist found dead in Hong Kong_ could’ve meant anyone (especially with the amount of unreported casualties from kaiju attacks that slipped through the cracks), and there was no identification found with the body, no wallet, no phone, no passport, nothing. They had but two pieces of evidence to go on: that he was probably American (loose U.S. coins in his front pocket), and that he had intricate kaiju tattoos winding up his arms and across his entire torso.

This gave Hermann some pause.

Certainly Hermann’s former penpal could not be the _only_ man alive—or, dead—with kaiju tattoos, not even the only—or so the article said—5’6” male alive with kaiju tattoos. There was no reason for Newton to be in Hong Kong, either. Hermann, intellectually, knew all this, and, intellectually, he knew he was overreacting, but a nagging, persistent feeling remained in his gut, so—on another whim—he locked up his laboratory and left a small note on the door explaining that he would not be going into work today.

Instead, Hermann took a bus into the city, all the way to the Bone Slums, where the American had been found.

 

* * *

 

Hermann Gottlieb had a fondness for abstract mathematics and melancholy films about artificial intelligence, but he also had a secret. It was the very one Newton Geiszler was not privy to, the very one Hermann kept held tight to his chest, the one that made him flinch at the slightest brush of fingers, keep to the edges of crowded rooms, and avoid intimacy in all its myriad of forms as if his life depended on it.

Hermann Gottlieb was not a normal physicist: he could raise the dead with a single touch.

 

* * *

 

The American tourist was still laid out in the alleyway in which they’d found him this morning, limbs tucked in neatly at his sides, white sheet pulled over his body. It was, Hermann thought, like something from a film, though the surrounding area was certainly lacking in interested spectators. And, to Hermann’s surprise, law enforcement.

Hermann’s Chinese was rusty, despite the lengthy period he’d been stationed in Hong Kong, but he knew enough to decently fumble his way through a conversation with the law enforcement that _were_ there.

The facts were these: the tourist had been found at twelve past seven that morning, by a local grocer on his way to take out the trash. After taking a moment to cycle through the normal human responses to finding a dead body outside your place of business, the grocer rushed back inside and proceeded to phone the police. At fifty-five past seven, the area was roped off. At twenty past eight, the news leaked; at thirty-two past eight, they found an ID hidden in a pocket of the tourist's leather jacket.

Victim of the mob, they thought. The black market dealers did their work not too far from here. It hadn’t been the first time. They doubted it would be the last. It would explain why they were being so strange and cagey about it all. (Hermann could hardly blame them.) It would also explain the several well-dressed bystanders in sunglasses lurking around the block.

They showed Hermann the ID. It was Newton’s. Of course it was.

“May I see his body?” Hermann said, very, very calmly. “I’m—an old friend.”

 

They pulled the sheet back for Hermann before ducking away, whether out of politeness or unease in tangling with the black market Hermann was not sure. He didn’t really care.

It took Hermann some time before he was able to build the courage up to look down. It was Newton, as vividly as Hermann remembered him from his photographs: wavy brown hair, thick square glasses, light stubble, kaiju tattoos spreading up his arms and stomach—

Hermann staggered back, bile rising in his throat. He would’ve fallen, if not for his cane.

When Hermann Gottlieb was twenty-six years, ten months, six days, two hours, and thirty minutes old, he wrote Newton Geiszler a letter declaring his deepest and innermost emotions. It used largely sentimental words like “soulmate”, “feelings”, “lonely”, and “love”, and was quite uncharacteristic of Hermann. He never sent it for those very reasons. He wonders, now, if he should’ve. It would not have saved Newton from bleeding out in a dirty alleyway with a knife in his stomach, but it might’ve given him some comfort in his final moments to know someone—this someone being Hermann—cared so deeply for him.

After counting to ten (a tactic Hermann picked up in his childhood when he was particularly upset over something), Hermann took two steps forwards and got, gingerly, to his knees at Newton’s side. The left lens of Newton’s glasses was cracked. He had a bruise on his left cheek, and a small, angry cut on his right. His clothing looked damp. With a pang, Hermann recalled the rainstorms that’d raged all week. How long had Newton been left out here, cold and wet and alone?

“I’m sorry, Newton,” Hermann murmured. And then the physicist got an idea.

There was no one to the right of Hermann. There was no one to the left. The vaguely imposing-looking probably-mob—sunglasses, color-coordinating suits, switchblades strapped quite obviously to their belts—he'd passed by were nowhere in sight.

One minute is all Hermann needed. One minute, and he could wish Newton a proper goodbye. Possibly even find out who _put_ him here. Hermann pulled his sleeve back to look at his wristwatch. One single minute.

He touched Newton’s cheek with the tip of one index finger.

Instantly, color flooded Newton’s cheeks. Hermann watched with bated breath as his eyes—hazel—blinked open slowly, almost as if he were merely waking up from a deep sleep. (Hermann was reminded, forcefully, of Sleeping Beauty.)

“Hi,” Newton said, and then he squinted through his filthy, broken glasses. “ _Hermann_?”

“Hello,” Hermann said, mouth dry.

“What are you doing here?” Newton said. “What am I doing here? Where even—” He looked around, still squinting, elbow nearly knocking Hermann in the chest (Hermann leaned back _very_ far), and then he looked down at his chest, the torn blood-stained fabric of his shirt, the knife. “Oh, yikes. That’s—okay.”

“Newton, I am going to be completely honest with you,” Hermann said, and Newton looked up at him. “You are dead.”

“Uh,” Newton said.

“You are dead, and I’ve brought you back,” Hermann held up his index finger, “by touching you.”

“You can do that?” Newton said. He looked impressed.

“You have exactly—” Hermann looked at his watch. “—Forty seconds before I will have to touch you again and you will be dead forever. If you have anything you wish to say—”

“I just wanted a kaiju brain,” Newton said. He looked very young, and very scared. “I didn’t think—forty seconds? Okay. Okay,” he ran his fingers through his hair. “Uh. Good to see you, I guess?” He laughed weakly.

“Do you know who…” Hermann stared, pointedly, at Newton’s chest, and Newton shook his head.

“Don’t know his name,” Newton said, “but he was a _really_ tall guy. Pretty creepy. Gold shoes? Man,” he sighed. “This _sucks_. I finally get to see you, and it’s under the shittiest possible circumstances.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermann said. “I should’ve—”

“ _I’m_ sorry,” Newton said. “For losing touch, for not trying harder to meet you—”

“I could’ve tried harder, too,” Hermann said, and then “Twenty-five seconds.”

“Twenty-five seconds,” Newton echoed miserably.

“You should know I was in love with you,” Hermann said. Newton blinked at him, and Hermann quickly amended, “Am in love with you. I don’t expect you to feel the same, of course—”

“I’m in love with you too,” Newton said, but he just sounded more miserable.

Hermann and Newton stared at each other. In all the times Hermann envisioned Newton saying those words, in all the various different ways, he never once imagined it like this.

“Well,” Newton finally added, and he slapped his palms down on his knees. “Why not go out with a bang? Does a kiss count as a touch?”

“I believe it would,” Hermann said.

Newton took a deep breath, and then he smiled at Hermann. He had a lovely smile. He always had a lovely smile. “Seems fitting. Promise me you won’t miss me too bad.”

He shut his eyes and puckered his lips.

Five seconds.

A multitude of thoughts ran through the physicist’s head in those five seconds as he leaned towards Newton Geiszler. He thought of how he was still desperately in love with Newton Geiszler. He thought of all the wasted years they could’ve had together. He thought of what it would be like to kiss Newton Geiszler, after he’d dreamt of it and longed for it so many times. (Hermann Gottlieb had never kissed anyone before.)

He thought of how they were still, very much, alone in that little alleyway, and how two people could, very easily, sneak out without being noticed.

“Newton,” Hermann said, and Newton cracked an eyelid open, frowning in confusion. “What if you didn’t have to stay dead?”

 

They were able to catch a bus going back to the Shatterdome. It was mostly empty, which was good, because this meant they would not have to risk standing or sitting close together. It also meant Newton, with his bloodied shirt and leather jacket tied around his stomach to keep himself—well—together, would not get too many stares.

Newton was kneeling backwards on his seat to face Hermann, chin propped up on his hands, and he would not stop smiling. “You changed your hair,” he said. “It used to be longer.”

Hermann touched the back of his undercut self-consciously. “I did,” he said. “Do you…?”

“I love it,” Newton said.

They lapsed into silence.

Exactly twenty-one minutes and forty-three seconds earlier, as they waited at the bus stop as inconspicuously as possible, Hermann explained to Newton what would happen now that he was...not _un_ dead, that had rather negative connotations that Hermann did not like applying to Newton, but _no longer_ dead. He could never touch Hermann, for one thing. For another, they’d already connected the dead (now quite vanished) American tourist with Newton Geiszler, so Newton may very well never be able to return home. Newton took both particularly hard, for which reason Hermann was glad he had not divulged the third caveat of Newton’s No-Longer-Dead-Ness, which was that someone _else_ had to die in his place so he could be here. This, Hermann reasoned, was something he would carry the guilt of privately within himself. Unless Newton asked. It helped, Hermann supposed, that he at least _knew_ who it was he’d traded Newton for—the gold-shoed man Newton mentioned had been one of the suited black market dealers on the same block, and as the minute ended and Hermann snuck Newton away, Hermann _just so happened_ to see him falling to the ground. If Hermann believed in things like karma, he might be inclined to blame it on that.

“Well,” Newton said, “I guess you wanna know what happened to me, huh?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Hermann said.

The facts, as Newton proceeded to graciously divulge, were these.

Newton had hit a wall in his research. Back before the jaeger program began going downhill (and before Hermann’s tenuous relationship with his father officially imploded upon itself), Newton had near unlimited kaiju samples to pick and choose from. Now he would be lucky if he even got a fraction of a piece of tissue. So Newton did another kind of research and found, through dubious sources, that there were certain underhanded (and equally dubious) business dealings being done in Hong Kong on the black market that could, hypothetically, allow him to procure kaiju samples. Even, hypothetically, a piece of a kaiju’s brain. All he would—hypothetically—have to do was transfer a simple covert package over to the dealers in question all the way from Boston, and if he was successful, and if they liked him, he just might get lucky.

The black market dealers did not like Newton Geiszler.

When Newton Geiszler was seven years, nine months, five days, five hours, and fifty-six minutes old, he broke his arm falling ten feet from the branch of an oak tree in his front yard. This was the most painful experience of Young Newt’s life. It now ranked second.

“And I didn’t even get the brain,” Newton sighed. “Can you believe it?” Hermann wished he could hold Newton’s hand. He’d never wished that about anyone before. “Shitty way to die,” Newton added, and then, “anyway, what are you doing here? In Hong Kong, I mean. Tourist?”

“Mm,” Hermann said. “Not quite.”

Their bus pulled up to Hermann's stop. They got off together.

“Did you move here?” Newton said, keeping pace with Hermann as Hermann led them down the also near-deserted sidewalk back to the Shatterdome. (By this point, it was only late afternoon, but the attacks'd put the entire city on edge and people had a tendency to stay inside these days.) Newton's hands were shoved into his jean pockets. His stomach had not bled in all the time Hermann had...reawakened him, and Hermann wondered how much—if any—medical attention he would require when they made it into Hermann’s lab. Would the knife wound heal by itself? Stitch itself back together and scar over? These all seemed like the kind of questions Newton would love to debate him in.

“Not quite,” Hermann said. With his free hand, he lifted his PPDC badge from his shirt pocket and flashed it at Newton. Newton whistled; Hermann preened.

“ _Wow_ ,” Newton said. He reached out to grab the badge, but when Hermann recoiled Newton snatched his hand back immediately. Newton was a fast learner. “When did that happen?”

“When we stopped writing,” Hermann said, clipping it back to the fabric. “I can give you a tour of the Shatterdome, if you’d like. I have my own laboratory.”

“I’m supposed to get assigned somewhere next month,” Newton said. “Or. I _was_ supposed to. I guess I still am, technically, unless…” Newton trailed off, and kicked at a bit of trash on the sidewalk. He sounded glum. “I wonder if we would’ve ended up here together anyway.”

“Perhaps,” Hermann said, and wished even harder to hold Newton’s hand.

 

* * *

 

It was remarkably easy to secure Newton a position alongside Hermann in the Shatterdome. Far easier than Hermann anticipated, especially on such short notice. It helped, Hermann supposed, that all of the kaiju-science staff—save for himself—had either quit or been let go of at this point. It also helped that he knew Tendo Choi, and Tendo Choi knew certain things about him, and that Tendo kept the door to LOCCENT unlocked at he manned the solo night shift at the computers. No one around to see two vaguely conspicuous men—one bloodstained with a gash in his shirt, one whose cane echoed each time it came down on the metal floors—sneak in.

“All due respect, Gottlieb,” Tendo said, “but isn’t this kind of illegal?”

“In a sense,” Hermann said. “Will you do it?”

“Well, sure,” Tendo said cheerfully.

Tendo Choi was head of many things in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, including, but not limited to, LOCCENT, base security, the party planning committee, and the Dungeons and Dragons club (the latter two established by Tendo himself), which meant he had access to a great many PPDC files that no one else did. Currently, at Hermann’s behest, he was forging Newton credentials, and a new identity, in the PPDC database. “Alright, Dr. Geiszler,” he said, after entering in Newton’s very basic information (eye color, hair color, a fabricated birthdate of April 20—“Haha, nice,” Newton said) and uploading a hastily-taken photograph of him. “You can keep _Newton_ if you’re attached, but you’re going to need a new last name.”

It was easier (so the physicist thought) to construct an entirely new fake identity for Newton than to rely on the name of the deceased American tourist not getting out, or on his and Newton's ability to talk their way out of difficult questions if it did.

“Huh,” Newton said. “Well, I’d want it to be meaningful, I guess, so.” He smiled at Hermann over Tendo’s shoulder. “How about Gottlieb? We can pretend we’re _married_.”

“Oh,” Hermann said, blushing. (It’d long been a very private, very fantastical dream of the physicist to elope with his pen pal.) “ _Newton_.”

The two scientists gazed longingly at each other.

“Tendo,” Newton said, “give Hermann a hug for me, won’t you?”

“I’m not going to do that,” Tendo said, still typing away. “And that’s real sweet and all, guys, but unfortunately, absolutely zero people are going to believe that Gottlieb’s had some genius scientist husband squirreled away for three years, so—”

“I’m a very private person,” Hermann said, but he conceded it would look suspicious. “No, I supposed not Gottlieb.”

“Smith,” Newton said, and then made a face. “No, that’s boring. Goldblum. Mulder?”

“Too on the nose,” Tendo said.

“My mom’s last name?” Newton suggested. “Schwartz?”

Tendo shrugged and typed it in. “I’m giving you clearance for the k-sci labs,” he said, “obviously the mess hall, LOCCENT—” He looked between Newton and Hermann, and his lip twitched up into a minute smirk. “—Gottlieb’s quarters, the good showers...We don’t actually have to scan in anywhere anymore around here, we haven’t in ages, but just in case you gotta verify something, y’know?” He clicked around a few more times. “I’ll fake more shit for you later, but for now, all anyone’s gotta know is that you’re a kaiju expert transferred from Anchorage.”

Together, they waited as Newton’s ID badge processed. Tendo leaned back in his chair and kicked his legs up on his desk. “So,” he said. “You’re Newton Geiszler.”

“Newt,” Newton corrected. “Just Newt’s fine.” 

“Gottlieb mentioned you once,” Tendo said, “which for _him—_ ”

The printer finished processing. Hermann snatched up Newton’s fresh ID badge. “We’ll be on our way, Mr. Choi,” Hermann said loudly, and prodded the back of Newton’s calf with the end of his cane until Newton began walking.

“See you!” Newton called.

 

Hermann had not been able to help but be bashful as he showed Newton into his quarters earlier that day as they waited for LOCCENT to clear out, and he could not help but be bashful now. They were not messy, not even by Hermann’s standards, but there was obvious evidence that he had never gotten over Newton everywhere. Newton’s letters in his desk drawer. Hardback volumes of Newton’s kaiju research lined up on his bookshelf. A Polaroid Newton sent him tacked to his neat corkboard, between his calendar and a few sticky notes reminding him when to take his medications. Newton lingered over the Polaroid now, expression unreadable. “Look how young I was,” he said, touching his frozen smile. He had pink streaks in his hair, a small metal stud in one nostril, more studs (black) along his ears.

“It’s only been six years,” Hermann said. “You haven’t changed that much.”

“Except that I’m a zombie now,” Newton pointed out. He suddenly looked very worried. “I don’t have to eat brains, do I? You know, vegetarian and all. I think brains technically count as meat.”

“You’re not a zombie, Newton,” Hermann said.

“Cool,” Newton said.

He sat on the edge of Hermann’s bed and picked at a loose thread on Hermann’s quilt. Hermann had lent him a plain cotton t-shirt and his only pair of sweatpants as pajamas, the t-shirt too tight in the stomach, the sweatpants long enough that Newton had to roll the cuffs, and with his glasses off he looked hopelessly endearing, like something Hermann wanted nothing more than to protect. He’d offered Newton a shower, tea, a small sewing kit to stitch up his stomach, and though Newton gladly accepted the last one (Hermann had to look away for the duration), he laughed off the first two. “So no touching,” Newton said. “Like, forever? Or just a day or so?”

“Forever,” Hermann said. He did not want to risk sitting next to Newton, so he eased himself into his small desk chair a short bit away.

“No holding hands?” Hermann shook his head. “Hugging?” Hermann shook his head again. Newton looked disappointed. “Oh. Guess a kiss is out of the question, then.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Among other things.”

Hermann blushed spectacularly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, well. Bed, Newton?”

 

Newton refused to take Hermann’s bed for the night, no matter how many times Hermann offered it, and ended up creating himself a small bundle of spare pillows and blankets on the floor. “We’ll find you a room of your own tomorrow,” Hermann promised, but Newton curled up and smiled at him.

“I like this,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

Hermann shut off the lights. He was nearly asleep when Newton said, gently, “Thanks, Hermann.”

 

* * *

 

To Hermann’s surprise, convincing Stacker Pentecost (rank of Marshal, father of two, not-so-secret object of Hermann’s hero worship) that Newton was his mysterious overseas colleague sent, without warning, to aid him in Hong Kong, and that any and all resemblance he bore to recently deceased American tourist Newton Geiszler whose photograph they kept flashing across local and international news channels (law enforcement had, as Hermann expected, covered up the mysterious loss of Newton’s body and simply declared him dead to everyone) was purely coincidental, took no time at all. Hermann suspected one of either two things to the true: one, that the Marshal was simply so grateful for the extra k-science staffing that he was willing to take Hermann at face value, or two, that the Marshal simply didn’t care enough to find out what was really going on. The latter, Hermann further suspected, was the more likely answer, a suspicion confirmed when the Marshal dismissed them both from his office with a pointed “The less I know, Dr. Gottlieb, the better for all of us.”

“We will have to set some ground rules, of course,” Hermann informed an enthusiastic and bouncing-on-his-heels Newton. Newton had been excited since they woke that morning and been approved of by Marshal Pentecost, and he’d only gotten more excited since Hermann had, first, shown him his brand new quarters (right across the hall from Hermann’s), and second, led him to his laboratory. _Their_ laboratory. Hermann would have a lab partner.

“I know,” Newton said. “No touching. I got it. Do I get a chalkboard?”

“If you’d like one,” Hermann said. He carefully pulled off his blazer and laid it over the back of his desk chair. “No touching. No working too closely to me.”

“Eh, I don’t think I’ll need one,” Newton decided. He’d begun rummaging through Hermann’s kitchenette, examining Hermann’s stacks of dusty mugs and his extensive instant ramen collection. “Hey, will I get samples? Like, actual bits of kaiju to work with?”

“You can certainly request them,” Hermann said. “It may take some time, but—”

“Cool,” Newton interrupted, slamming a cupboard shut, and then he turned around and beamed at Hermann. “Dude, this is so awesome! You and me sharing a lab. Working side by side. This is what I always wanted!”

It was what Hermann always wanted, too. For the first time in his life, the physicist felt something that he could only describe as _elation._

 

* * *

 

Six days, three hours, and twenty minutes into sharing a lab with Newton Geiszler, Hermann Gottlieb realized that—resulting from his eagerness in having Newton back in his life—he’d made, perhaps, a slight error in judgement. It was not that he’d grown tired of Newton, or that he’d fallen out of love with Newton by any means. It was simply that Newton was...chaotic. And erratic. And, most unforgivable of all, _messy_.

“Please consider,” Hermann said, after the first time Newton left a large chuck of kaiju (which organ Hermann did not care to know) dangerously close to Hermann’s desk, “what happens when I come into contact with dead flesh.” He prodded at the bit of kaiju with the end of his cane.

“Oh,” Newton said. “ _Oh_.”

Newton made somewhat of a conscious effort to be neater after that, but he’d forgotten by the end of the next week. It had...mildly disastrous results this time.

“Dude, look!” Newton shouted, as he and Hermann watched the dead kaiju skin parasite Newton had been examining—and had left, carelessly, on the kitchenette, where a half-asleep Hermann had brushed against it as he made a cup of coffee—leap back to life and begin scurrying in frantic circles around the center of the lab. “I’ve never seen one alive before! No one has!”

“Catch it!” Hermann shouted back, unsure of what creature would have to die in its place if he didn’t touch it again by the end of the minute but not wanting to find out. It was random, he knew, based on proximity and (he assumed) level of sentience, but what in heaven’s name equaled the life of an extraterrestrial parasite? It could include _Newton_ for all he knew. “Catch the bloody thing, Newton—”

Newton picked the parasite up and held it away from himself, laughing delightedly. “It’s adorable!” he said, and scratched its head. The parasite stopped struggling and nuzzled into the touch. “It’s like a big cat. Oh my God, Hermann, can I keep—”

Hermann batted it from Newton’s arms with his cane, and bent down touched the top of its head quickly. The parasite laid cold and still once more.

“What the hell, Hermann?”

“One minute only,” Hermann said. “Or—well.” He’d not yet told Newton the price he’d paid for his life. “One minute only,” he repeated, more apologetically.

Newton looked as if he were going to protest, but he must’ve realized Hermann meant it, because his shoulders sagged and the fight left him. He picked up the dead parasite. “Well,” he said, examining its body. “They react positively to being pet. Uh. Fast little guys, too.” He looked up at Hermann. “Maybe next time we could do this under more controlled circumstances?”

Hermann nodded. He waited until Newton returned to his dissection table and began jotting down notes on the parasite before breathing a sigh of relief that Newton had not asked about the minute.

 

* * *

 

This was the first incident that gave Hermann serious cause for alarm. The second, and the last, happened exactly two days, sixteen hours, and four minutes later, wherein Hermann—having had a breakthrough on a section of a particularly bewildering equation—turned quickly to rush to his chalkboard and nearly collided with Newton, who was attempting to bring Hermann a cup of coffee. They missed each other by a centimeter.

“We cannot go on like this,” Hermann declared, cleaning spilt coffee from his blazer as Newton hovered by him anxiously. Hermann’s heart was still pounding. They’d been _that_ close to Newton—well. “I am instituting _new rules_.”

No touching. No working too close together. No kaiju near Hermann. And, most importantly of all: “Keep to your side of the lab,” Hermann declared, stamping down the last piece of yellow hazmat tape and then nodding in satisfaction.

 

* * *

 

The tape did its job, for the most part, and they did _their_ jobs, working alongside each other in peace. Hermann kept to his half of the laboratory, and Newton kept to his.

And then Newton became _restless_.

“Not even the tiniest touch?” he said, chair pulled up to the very edge of the tape line and watching Hermann scrawl across his board. He’d gotten bored mid-dissection and decided to pester Hermann instead. He’d not even removed his headlamp.

“No,” Hermann said.

“But I _want_ to touch you,” Newton said. “Like, really, really badly. It’s all I want to do.”

Hermann would not confess such a thing aloud, lest he upset Newton, but he wanted to touch Newton very, very badly too. He wanted to hold Newton’s hand. He wanted to stroke Newton’s hair. He wanted to take Newton into his arms and kiss him and do a number of things to him that made Hermann blush to consider. Newton’s cheek had been cold when he touched it, cold and stiff. How would it feel _warm_? Hermann sighed and pressed his forehead to the chalkboard. It, too, was cold and stiff. “I know,” he said. “I am very sorry, Newton.”

“Is there a cure for it?” Newton said.

Hermann turned at this. “A cure?”

“For me,” Newton said. “Can we—I don’t know, fix me so I _can_?”

“There’s nothing about you _to_ fix,” Herman said, fierce and adamant (Newton was perfect as is), and Newton rolled his eyes and lifted his shirt from his skinny jeans. He’d done a fine job of stitching his own wound back together—biologist, expert in human, animal, and alien anatomy alike, Hermann reminded himself—but it was still, undoubtedly, a fatal wound. Newton pointed at it.

“I was _dead_ , Hermann,” Newton said. “Do you know how weird that was? One second it was just—black. Nothing. And the next you were there.” He jerked his shirt back down. “I can’t even touch you.”

Hermann worked his jaw. “I’m sorry,” he offered lamely. “I wish I could—”

Newton waved him off. After a few seconds of silence, he hopped off his stool and returned to his dissections.

 

“I have an idea,” Newton said three hours and thirty-seven minutes later. Hermann had graduated from working at his chalkboard to filling out paperwork at his desk at this point, and he pulled off his glasses and looked up at Newton, who lingered by the tape line, curiously.

“Yes?”

Newton, Hermann noticed, was wearing one of his thick pairs of dissection gloves, washed of the bits of kaiju and thick extraterrestrial blood that usually covered them; before Hermann could react, or shout for him to stop, Newton was swooping in and taking one of Hermann’s hands in his. “I knew it!” Newton crowed delightedly, waving Hermann’s hand around as Hermann recovered from his shock. “Solution to the no-touching thing. Gloves.”

“Gloves,” Hermann marveled, staring at their laced fingers. He lifted Newton’s hand.

Hermann Gottlieb met Newton Geiszler, via letter, when he was twenty-four years, four months, fifteen days, two hours, and twenty-three minutes old. Hermann long regarded this, then recently his decision to share a lab with Newton, as the happiest moment of his life. Now, with Newton’s hand wrapped tight in Hermann’s, Hermann realized that may no longer be the case. “Gloves,” Hermann repeated, and his face split into a wide grin.

 

* * *

 

Newton proved to be just as innovative in finding ways to work around their little problem as he was in all of his fields of study. Gloves meant they could hold each other’s hands for as long as they wanted, whenever they wanted, and that Newton could touch his arm to get his attention, and that Newton could brush their fingers together when he handed Hermann coffee. It was not perfect—he could not feel the warmth of Newton’s skin, nor could he forget the layer of rubber between them—but it was enough. “Kissing’s next,” Newton told Hermann as Hermann stroked his thumb over the back of Newton’s hand one evening in the lab, simply because he could, now.

Hermann brought Newton’s gloved hand up to his lips and kissed it. Newton flushed.

“Not like that,” he laughed. “I meant—I’m going to find a way to kiss you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

This rang a little too true for Newton and Hermann. The moment irreparably ruined, Hermann set Newton’s hand back down on his desk and resumed his work.

Newton showed up to work the next day with a large, shielded mask in hand, the sort of thing one might wear if they were welding metals. As neither Hermann nor Newton welded metals on a daily basis, nor did either of them (as far as Hermann knew) ever intend to, he was understandably confused. Newton tossed him the mask, and watched as he frowned at it. “Put it on,” Newton ordered.

Hermann slipped it on. Newton—gloves pulled on tight—hopped up onto the edge of Hermann’s desk, flipped the translucent plastic shield down, and proceeded to plant a large kiss right overtop Hermann’s forehead. “ _Oh_ ,” Hermann gasped. Though he obviously could not feel it, Newton was so close to him, near enough that Hermann could count every last freckle dotting his cheeks.

Newton kissed right over his lips, next, then slid his gloved hand up under to caress Hermann’s cheek. They stared into each other’s eyes for a little while. Then Newton grinned. “You’re a great kisser,” he said.

Hermann itched to cup the side of Newton’s face as well. “I ought to get a pair of gloves for myself,” he murmured.

Newton shut his eyes and pressed his lips to the shield once more, stroking his thumb across Hermann’s skin. Hermann shut his eyes, too, and pretended very hard.

 

There was a knock on the door of Hermann’s quarters that night, mere moments after he’d finished showering; knowing, somehow, that it was Newton, Hermann quickly finished pulling on his pajamas and toweled at his hair one last time (and pushed it back in a way he quickly determined would be, hypothetically, the most visually appealing) before unlatching his lock. It was indeed Newton, smiling away at him with his hands tucked behind his back, in Hermann’s sweatpants and an off-white bathrobe emblazoned with the PPDC logo.

“Hello,” Hermann said. He was very pleased to see Newton—he was always pleased to see Newton—but he did wonder at the lateness of the hour. “Is there something you need, Newton?”

“Not really,” Newton said. “Can I come in?” Hermann nodded and stood back. Newton stepped inside carefully, arms still behind his back. “Can you sit down on the bed?”

Hermann frowned, but obliged.

Newton stood a few feet in front of him. He pulled his arms out from behind his back. Hermann assumed, earlier, that it was merely Newton being courteous of their No Touching rules and making it easier for the both of them to navigate the space around each other; he saw now Newton had been hiding a small tote bag. He threw it at Hermann, who caught it, frown deepening.

“What’s this?”

“Look inside,” Newton said.

Hermann opened the bag. He quickly shut the bag. “Newton,” he stammered, hot blush spreading over his face. “Er—”

Newton dropped his bathrobe. He’d forgone a shirt, and now he began to kick off the sweatpants. It was terribly distracting.

“We can’t,” Hermann continued babbling, “I mean to say, I _would_ , but—”

“Obviously,” Newton said with a grin. He nodded towards the bag. “That’s why we’re improvising. The purple one is for you. I used your credit card since mine is kinda gone, hope that’s cool.”

One hour and twenty-three minutes later, a satisfied and rather smug Newton tied his bathrobe belt around his waist and blew Hermann a kiss goodnight.

 

* * *

 

“Minute’s a bit arbitrary, isn’t it?” Newton said. They were taking a smoke break together on a small patch of the Shatterdome roof, which meant Hermann smoked a cigarette while Newton looked at him disapprovingly and occasionally shook his head and _tsked_. Hermann was going to quit any day now. He’d been telling himself that since his twenties. It was, in fact, a lie.

“Mm,” Hermann said. He busied himself with blowing out a cloud of smoke through his nostrils, something that seemed to delight and disgust Newton in equal measure.

Newton reached his hand out. “Can I try?”

Hermann considered it for a moment, and then nodded. “Not like that,” he said. Newton lowered his hand; Hermann pinched the cigarette between forefinger and thumb and placed it very delicately between Newton’s lips. Newton made a face, but he did not remove it until he’d taken a coughing, gagging drag. “So, a minute?”

“It just—is that way,” Hermann said. The conversation was inching dangerously closer to certain facts about Newton’s second go at life that Hermann would rather prefer to keep to himself.

“How’d you figure this all out, anyway?” Newton said. He pressed the cigarette back between Hermann’s lips, careful to keep his fingers at a distance.

When Hermann Gottlieb was nine years, ten months, twenty-six days, and three hours old, his elderly (and unnamed) cat strayed too far from the family farmhouse, wandered out onto the nearby dirt road, and was struck by a passing motorist who happened to be in precisely the wrong place at precisely the wrong time. Young Hermann had been quite devastated over the event. He’d been very fond of the cat, and the cat had been very fond of him, so it only seemed right that he give it a proper burial.

It’d been a bit of a shock when it sprang back to life immediately after Hermann—intending to pick its body up and carry it to the backyard—touched its fur, and it’d been even more of a shock when his sister Karla (twelve to Hermann’s nine) was in the kitchen when Hermann wandered in two minutes later, shouting her head off about her parakeet dropping dead in its cage.

This was to say nothing of the final shock, which came a short time later, when the cat jumped up into Hermann’s lap to be pet and promptly fell cold and still once more.

Hermann had the soul of a scientist, even at such a young age, and the following few years of his youth were spent using fireflies and flowers alike to learn the caveats of his strange new gift. Young Hermann eventually came to his two conclusions: one touch, back forever, another, gone forever. More than a minute, and something else had to die.

“Er,” Hermann said. “Figure it out?”

“Yeah,” Newton said. He took the cigarette. “Is it a curse?” he said. “Like in a fairy tale? Did you piss off an old witch or something?”

“Nothing like that,” Hermann said. Newton wheezed through another drag of the cigarette, mildly green in the face, and Hermann frowned at him. “You don’t have to smoke that if you don’t want to, you know, Newton.”

Newton shook his head. “Nah,” he said, and he smiled. “It’s like a kiss.”

 

* * *

 

Newton was so energetic, so excited, so full of life all the time, and Hermann was surprised it took him as long as he did to grow tired of everything once more. Newton tired of his fake name, which still fell deaf on his ears after all this time, and began requesting he be called _just_ Newt. (“Only my mother calls me doctor,” he’d joke in deflection.) He tired of his fabricated past. He tired of not being able to talk to his father. He tired of his paltry wardrobe, which consisted of the salvageable clothing he’d died in and the results of one shopping spree funded by Hermann. Hermann suspected he simply tired of not being Newton Geiszler.

(Hermann caught Newton skimming through his own obituary on his computer one night. He had it bookmarked.)

Before long—perhaps to distract himself from his dissatisfaction—he was talking of finding a _cure_ once more. “If you touch me,” he said, holding another dead kaiju skin parasite above his dissection table, Hermann standing across from him and poised to touch it on Newton’s signal as per the comfortable routine they’d developed over the years, “I’ll die. Again. And be dead for real.”

“That’s how it works, yes,” Hermann said, remembering his poor childhood cat. “Are you ready?”

Newton nodded, and shoved his safety goggles into place. Hermann prodded the underbelly of the skin parasite. Immediately, as though shocked back to life, it began waving its arms and emitting a high-pitched squeal. “Hi, beautiful,” Newton cooed, scratching at its neck. “Come to mommy—”

“Is there any practical, scientific reason for bringing them back to life,” Hermann said, watching Newton cradle and hug the hideous parasite like it was an infant or (in Newton’s own words) a particularly large cat, “or do you just want to coddle them?”

“Uh-huh,” Newton said, though Hermann wasn’t sure to which answer. He scratched under the parasite’s chin again, and the parasite promptly spat something blue and glowing and gelatinous all over the front of Newton’s work apron.

Hermann yelped in shock. “Newton!” The blue glow did not seem acidic, at least, and was not eating through Newton’s apron, not like how a kaiju’s saliva could with the metal of the jaegers.

Newton was unphased by all of it. “Naughty,” Newton scolded, tapping the parasite on the top of the head. The parasite shrunk in on itself as though it were actually ashamed. “But also, _cool_.” Newton began examining it quickly (forty seconds) as Hermann jotted down everything he said to a pad of paper. “Fast heart rate,” Newton said. “ _Strong_ bite. Look at him go.” The parasite had latched itself onto the front of Newton’s apron and was clinging by its teeth alone. “Anyway, I was thinking—” the parasite let out another shrill screech, “—what if I just died again?”

Hermann looked up quickly from the notepad, pencil stilling. “What do you mean?”

“What if I, like, died, officially declared dead, no pulse, no brain activity, etcetera,” Newton said, “but they—“ He mimed a defibrillator with his free hand. “—resuscitated me? Could we touch then?”

“Er,” Hermann said.

“Electric shock,” Newton mused, scratching the underbelly of the parasite. “Maybe I could give myself a heart attack or something, or—”

“Five seconds,” Hermann said, desperate to distract Newton from that line of thinking.

Newton looked mournfully at the parasite. It had chewed a hole in Newton’s apron. “Can I keep it this time, Hermann?” Newton begged. “For more than a minute?” The parasite squealed again, and Newton beamed down at it. “What would happen if you just _didn’t_ —”

Hermann touched the parasite.

 

It wasn’t until Hermann presented a peace offering of tea that Newton—after an hour and twenty-five minutes of refusing to speak to Hermann—finally looked him in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” Hermann said, holding the mug that he wasn’t balancing along with the head of his cane out. “You know I would if I could.”

Newton tapped his fingers on his knee for a few seconds before slipping his thick glove back on and taking the mug. “I know,” he said, taking care to rub at Hermann’s thumb with his own. Hermann shifted the other mug to his free hand and eased himself down carefully into the small chair sitting on the other side of Newton’s desk. “Well, I mean,” Newton continued, fixing his stare on Hermann. “I don’t know, actually, you haven’t _told_ me why you can’t.”

The conversation the physicist had long-dreaded having with Newton reared its head once more. Hermann coughed and said, airily, “Haven’t I?”

“What happens if you let something come back for longer than a minute?”

Hermann coughed again. “Is it...relevant?”

Newton set his mug down. “Hermann,” he said, and narrowed his eyes. “What happens?”

“Well,” Hermann said. “Well, you see, Newton. Er. It’s all very—very _quid pro quo_. That is to say—well. Something must take its place.”

“Something’s gotta die instead after a minute, you mean,” Newton said. “Or some _one_.”

There was a tense silence.

“Well,” Hermann said, for the fourth time. “Er. I suppose—yes, that’s it.”

“Hermann,” Newton said. “I’ve been back for a _lot_ longer than a minute.”

It had been 1,987,172 minutes longer than a minute, to be precise.

 

Hermann was fast, even with his cane, but he was no match for a furious Newton Geiszler and lagged behind Newton a good few meters as Newton stormed down the Shatterdome hallways to his bunk. “You didn’t think to _tell me_?” he shouted over his shoulder. “That I was—”

“I didn’t want to upset you!” Hermann half-shouted back, grateful, at least, that the k-science quarters were isolated and far from those of the rest of the Shatterdome and no one would overhear them. “I thought if you knew you’d be angry, or—”

Newton’s boots squeaked on the tile as he came to a sudden halt and spun on his heels, and Hermann came to just as sudden a halt inches in front of him. “You were right,” Newton said. He was flushed bright red. “I _am_ angry. I’m pretty pissed, actually. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would it have changed anything if I had?” Hermann said. “Would you have said no?”

Newton hesitated. “No,” he said. “Maybe.” He let out a small noise of frustration and threw his hands up. “I don’t know! But you maybe could’ve told me I’d be murdering someone else by saying yes!”

“I was trying to be kind,” Hermann said, weakly. “I thought if you knew, you wouldn’t...” Had he been trying to be kind, Hermann wondered now, or had he merely been selfish? So distraught at the concept of a life without Newton Geiszler that he was willing to lie to him—if not outright, by concealing the whole truth from him—to keep him in it?

Who had he _really_ brought Newton back for?

Newton pushed his glasses up and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Do you know who died because of me?”

Hermann hesitated, and then he nodded slowly. “It was one of the men who killed you,” he said. “So—he was bad. A very bad man.”

“Did you have any way of knowing that beforehand?” Newton said.

Hermann shook his head just as slowly. “It’s random,” he said, miserably. “Based on proximity. It could’ve been anyone walking by.” (Hermann would’ve done it again in a heartbeat.)

Newton sighed, and pushed his glasses back down. “I need a little bit of time to myself, okay, Hermann?” he said. “I don’t really...feel like a super great person right now.”

“Okay,” Hermann said. “I’m sorry, Newton.” Newton unlatched the lock to his bunk. Hermann quickly added, “I love you.”

Newton flashed him a brief, somewhat forced smile. “Love you too,” he said, and slipped inside.

 

* * *

 

Newton did not show up for work the next day, nor the day after that, nor the day after that, nor did Hermann see him anywhere in the mess hall or in the myriad of Shatterdome corridors, nor—as Hermann learned when he confronted the man—had Tendo Choi seen Newton anywhere either. By all accounts, Newton had spent the entire time in his quarters and locked away from the world. More specifically, locked away from Hermann.

Hermann knew, logically, he should give his friend the space he needed. He knew Newton was emotional—erratic—often short-tempered—and that he often didn’t mean what he said. (Hermann often didn’t mean what he’d say, either.) He knew forcing himself into Newton’s company might only make it worse, and might only make Newton pull away harder.

But Hermann _missed_ Newton.

Newton answered after Hermann knocked on his door for the third time, just barely peeking his head out, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses. The lights in his bunk were off. Hermann wondered if he’d spent the whole time in the dark, too. “Oh,” he said. “Hey, Hermann.”

“Newton,” Hermann said, and nodded curtly.

For a moment, Newton looked as if he was going to close the door, but he sighed and opened it wider. “Just close it behind you,” he said.

Hermann obeyed, and Newton switched the overhead light on and flopped back on his bed; Hermann stood, awkwardly, at the foot, not daring to move any closer to Newton. He cleared his throat. “Newton,” he began. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry—”

“Oh, God,” Newton groaned, sitting up quickly. “Please don’t apologize. You don’t need to apologize. I was overreacting. And being ungrateful as fuck.” He smiled tentatively. “I literally owe you my life, Hermann.”

The physicist wondered, once more, for whom he had really brought Newton Geiszler back. Certainly not for Newton’s father, who mourned an empty casket back in Boston. For Newton, yes, _in theory_ , but Newton hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t known the rules and restrictions of what Hermann was offering—that Newt (colleague of Hermann, PPDC employee, kaiju expert) could come back, but Newton Geiszler (biologist, MIT graduate, only child, amateur musician) was dead for good, that Hermann could never offer him the intimacy of touch, could only love him from afar (as he had during their youth) and hope that that was enough.

For Hermann?

A selfish action and a selfless action did not necessarily equal a right, but Hermann was willing to try. “Newton,” he said, hesitantly.

 

It wasn’t necessarily a break up, Hermann reasoned. Hermann loved Newton, and he knew Newton loved him, and Newton kissed him through plastic shields and held his hand through rubber gloves, which counted for something, but they never discussed their relationship in...definitive terms. They’d never felt the need to. But Newton was restless. Newton was bored. Newton was discontent. Newton, surely, was only staying with Hermann out of obligation, gratefulness, the need to thank Hermann. That alone was cause for Hermann to pause and reconsider.

The bottom line, he determined, was simply that Newton should have someone who could love him the way he deserved to be loved, in every way possible, touches and kisses and all. It was all very logical and reasonable in Hermann’s head. Hermann felt it all sounded equally logical and reasonable as he explained it to Newton.

Suffice to say, Newton did not take it well. This was also a reasonable reaction.

 

* * *

 

Two days, ten hours, and twenty-seven minutes after Hermann Gottlieb was unceremoniously kicked out of a shrill and heartbroken Newton Geiszler’s Shatterdome bunk, Newton returned to work, though he was far more subdued in everything he did. He did not play his music half as loud. He did not purposefully cross the line into Hermann’s half of the lab. He did not doodle on Hermann’s board (hearts, small cartoonish kaiju, small love letters), nor did he slip on work gloves simply to hold Hermann’s hand. He did not smile at Hermann anymore. Hermann supposed it was deserved. It’s what he wanted to happen, after all: he wanted Newton to pull from him and find someone better.

Perhaps they could return to how they used to be, back when they wrote to each other—friends, colleagues, Hermann pining away from afar, Newton, perhaps, a bit happier. If Newton was happy, then Hermann could be happy.

The physicist was well aware he was lying to himself, but the notion comforted him anyway, so he clung to it.

Their uneasy peace did not last, and Hermann’s hopes—that he and Newton could at least remain friends—were very quickly dashed. Newton’s bad habits, which had, up until then, been only mildly irksome, nothing more than a few seconds’ distraction, spiraled into deliberate and petty and infuriating. Newton began playing his music at twice the volume. He began purposefully erasing bits of equations from Hermann’s boards. He began leaving his kaiju samples all over Hermann’s workspace, from the floor to his desk to the rungs of his ladder. Hermann took it all in stride, reminding himself Newton was very upset with him, until he couldn’t.

“Will you _please_ be a little tidier, Newton?” Hermann finally said, with forced calmness, kicking at a bit of entrail that’d ended up under his desk once more. “The rules are still very much in place, even if—”

“No,” Newton said, and threw another bit of intestine. It smacked into one of Hermann’s boards and slid to the floor with a sick, wet sound, taking the left side of a diagram with it.

Hermann clenched the handle of his cane so tightly his knuckles went white. “You’ll recall,” he said after counting to ten, with even more forced calmness, “that I am very particular about dead things on my side of the laboratory.”

“Uh-huh,” Newton said. “Hey, Hermann, out of curiosity, how many other ex-boyfriends have you raised from the dead? This a habit? A trial-and-error thing? Are you going to try again, since I turned out to be such a fucking disappointment?” His voice got shriller. “I guess your condition is pretty convenient for your _obvious_ fear of intimacy, huh?” He threw another intestine. This one took out the rest of the diagram.

This was the final straw.

It was why—three hours and twenty-nine minutes later—Hermann and Newton found themselves hanging their heads in front of one Marshal Stacker Pentecost as they were thoroughly and methodically chewed out for their lack of professionalism, after a LOCCENT intern (sent to have Drs. Gottlieb and Geiszler sign off on some paperwork) had happened upon them throwing entrails back and forth and shouting their heads off. Luckily for Hermann and Newton (and especially lucky for their shared secret), the intern had fled and reported them to HR before they could overhear too much of the doctors’ argument beyond liberal usage of the words  _repressed_ and  _manchild_.

“You are _grown men_ ,” Marshal Pentecost said before dismissing them, leaving Hermann feeling like a particularly badly behaved child.

(This would not be the last of their visits to Human Resources, though it would be the last time Marshal Pentecost stepped in to personally reprimand them.)

“A cat,” Hermann said on their mildly shameful walk back to their laboratory.

“What?” Newton said.

“I brought back my cat when I was seven,” Hermann said. “It was hit by a passing car.” He did not mention how Karla’s parakeet paid the price, nor how his cat met its end anyway later when it leapt into Young Hermann’s lap. He felt this would merely remind Newton of the price his own life had paid and upset him once more.

“A cat,” Newton echoed.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever—” Hermann faltered. _Brought back to stay_ and _loved_ were both equally applicable here, as they were both equally the truth. Hermann, unsure of which one Newton wanted to hear, chose neither. Instead, he cleared his throat awkwardly for some time. This did not mollify Newton as Hermann intended it to, and it especially did not combat his claims regarding Hermann repressing his emotions, and so their evening finished as uncomfortably as it commenced.

 

* * *

 

As Hermann adjusted himself to his strange new dynamic with Newton (an adjustment made easier by the fact that there was a _great deal_ of work to be done), Newton adjusted himself to the strange new information he’d recently discovered about his Situation and the subsequent Great Decision he’d made as a result.

Newton was a biologist; he knew better than most that every single life must run its course and come to an eventual end, whether by natural or unnatural means. And an end was an end. No coming back. Maybe there was something after death, maybe there wasn’t, but whatever happened happened on a level entirely separate from the physical. You died, and you decayed. It was a basic fact. Newton was comfortable in this knowledge.  He thought he reacted to finding out he was wrong about all of it pretty well, considering the circumstances. (Of all people, of course it had to be Hermann—brilliant, eccentric Hermann, Hermann who Newton was besotted with and bewildered by in equal measures, Hermann who made a professional career out of proving Newton wrong, Hermann who was Newton’s prince charming in a sweatervest even before he yanked Newton from the infinity of oblivion.)

Life, the biologist, concluded, didn’t _always_ end with death.

The biologist would later revise his understanding once more. Life _must always_ end in death, but the death did not, necessarily, have to match with the life in question. A man may be stabbed in the stomach in a Hong Kong alleyway and his murderer may be the one to end up in the ground. This knowledge was considerably more distressing than the last, on account of Hermann’s deliberate withholding of it and Newton’s unintentional starring role in the proceedings.

Newton easily forgave Hermann. This did not change the fact that he was alive in the place of someone else, bad man or not.

Newton was not exceptionally religious, and he did not believe in the unscientific notions of _destiny_ and _fate_ (though he had to admit there was something strangely coincidental about unknowingly ending up dead in the same city as his old sweetheart, who just so happened to be able to raise the dead), but he could not shake the notion that he must still be alive for a reason. A greater purpose. The universe granted Newton Geiszler a second chance at the end of the world, and he did not intend to waste it.

“They’re sending me a kaiju brain,” he told Hermann one day. (It had been one year, one month, three days, six hours, and fourteen minutes since Hermann broke his heart. Newton had not yet gotten over it. He did not believe he would any time soon.) “Well, a piece of it. Intact and everything.”

“Mm,” Hermann said. He was busy with his equations.

“Hypothetically,” Newton said, “someone could create a neural bridge with a kaiju, couldn’t they? If it’s just a little piece of the brain? A teeny tiny little piece—”

Hermann went rigid very fast. He slid off his glasses—large, round—and looked up at Newton. “Newton,” he said. “You are _not_ drifting with a kaiju.”

“Hypothetically drifting with a kaiju,” Newton corrected.

Hermann’s expression was unreadable. “It’d kill you.”

“I mean,” Newton said, with a forced, wry grin, “technically, it’d kill me _again_.”

The universe granted Newton a second chance at the end of the world, and Newton intended to use that chance to save the world as best he could.

 

* * *

 

Hermann had not actually expected Newton to follow through on his mad proposal to drift with the kaiju brain. Even if he had, he doubted it would’ve prepared him for the sight of Newton—bloody, glasses gone, cobbled-together pons interface slipping down his head—seizing on the floor of their lab.

He flung himself to Newton’s side, reaching out, desperate, frantic (“What have you _done_ , Newton, no, no—”) but snatched his hand away almost as quickly as he’d extended it. He could not touch Newton. Newton was seizing, Newton was dying, right in front of him, and Hermann could not save him because he could not touch him. A mad laugh bubbled up in his chest. Hermann swallowed it down; tears prickled his eyes instead.

He managed to unclamp the interface from the top of Newton’s head after thoroughly wrapping a handkerchief around his hand, but there was no way of telling if Newton was still alive. He could not take his pulse. He could not feel for his heartbeat. He could not shake him. “Stay here,” Hermann plead, aware of the ridiculousness of direction such an order at an unconscious individual, “I’ll be back in seconds. Please, Newton, stay alive, I—”

Hermann pushed himself to his feet, wincing at the stabbing pain in his leg (he’d fallen hard), and rushed as fast as he could to LOCCENT.

 

* * *

 

Hermann Gottlieb was not the type of man to do things in halves.

Originally an ideology imposed upon him by his strict and distant father, who would punish Young Hermann for achieving anything less than perfection (be it in model airplane construction or his marks in primary school), he later adopted it willingly in adulthood as a means of self-discipline. No theory proposed by the physicist was unfounded, no research poorly conducted, no equation not double and triple checked for errors. When Hermann's work consumed him, his work was better. This was particularly helpful with his work in jaeger coding, where the slightest error—a shifted decimal point, a missing zero—could mean death for thousands.

It was particularly _un_ helpful when it came to Hermann’s love life, particularly in relation to one singular Dr. Newton Geiszler. Hermann had been infatuated. He’d been lovesick. He’d been head over heels, gone, adrift in a sea of sentimentality. Newton was his first love (and though Hermann did not know it at the time, his _only_ love), and Hermann’s attentions that were usually focused on numbers and graphs and charts and degrees quickly and immediately shifted to the young biologist instead: of what Newton was doing at that very moment, of Newton’s hazel eyes and his waved brown hair, of the small heart he’d drawn in the corner of his last letter, of how Hermann would drop it all and go to Newton’s side (fate of the world be damned) if Newton asked it of him.

Of how Hermann had known, even as he had told himself he was merely rushing to the side of the deceased American tourist to confirm his suspicions and pay his respects to an old friend, that if Newton Geiszler was lying dead on the ground Hermann was not going to leave him there.

Hermann Gottlieb was thirty-five years, seven months, three days, four hours, and thirty-six minutes old when he stretched out a hand to Newton Geiszler (a hand the biologist could not take) in the ruins of Hong Kong and offered himself up to save the world. Hermann Gottlieb did nothing in halves, and that included loving Newton Geiszler.

 

“Going in,” Newton said, “in three, two, one—”

Newton Geiszler was seven years, nine months, five days, five hours, and fifty-six minutes old and falling out of a tree, and Newton Geiszler was eighteen years and three hours old and getting his first tattoo, and Newton Geiszler was twenty-one years, five months, thirteen days, two hours, and three minutes old and jumping around as he played an electric guitar, and Newton Geiszler was thirty-four years, eleven months, twenty-four days, one hour, and ten minutes old and staring down the right-hand woman of the man who left him for dead over four years ago (“Didn’t we already kill you?” the woman said, frowning at Newton, and Newton shrugged, shit happens, you know? now can Newt _please_ have a _fucking_ kaiju brain), and Hermann Gottlieb was eight years, ten months, fourteen days, and six hours old, and he was building a model airplane and cutting school to avoid the children who made a game of bullying him. Hermann Gottlieb was ten years, eleven months, twenty-one days, and twenty-three hours old, and Father was yelling at him (Father always yelled at him), and Hermann Gottlieb was twenty-eight years, nine months, nine days, three hours, and forty minutes old and Father was still yelling at him, and he was nine years, ten months, twenty-six days, three hours, and thirty-one minutes old and hiding alone in his bedroom, recently undead-then-dead-again cat at his feet, and he was twenty-four years, four months, fifteen days, two hours, and twenty-three minutes old and he couldn’t be an astronaut like he wanted, and the world was ending, but there was a letter in the mail from a young man Hermann had never met calling Hermann _clever_ and _fascinating_ and _awesome_ , and Hermann thought he could like him very much, Hermann was thirty years, eight months, three days, twelve hours, and thirty-three minutes old and Newton Geiszler had a knife in his stomach (Hermann liked him very much, Hermann loved him, Hermann always loved him)—

“This is so weird,” Newton said, watching Hermann stand over his dead body. “This is—is this what I looked like?”

“More or less,” Hermann said.

His hand hovered over the curve of Newton’s cold, freckled cheek. (He could’ve been asleep.) Where to touch Newton? His forehead? His hand? His lips? The cheek, yes.

Newton sat straight up. “Hi,” the Newton of Hermann’s memory said, and squinted through his filthy, broken glasses. “ _Hermann_?”

“You made me a little shorter,” Newton said, tilting his head. “And a little hotter.”

“I did _not_ ,” Hermann said.

“You made me look like a _movie star_ , dude.” Newton was grinning. “Is that really how you see me?”

“What are you doing here?” Newton said. “What am I doing here?”

“This is confusing,” Newton said. “Can we go somewhere else?”

Hermann Gottlieb was twenty-four years, four months, fifteen days, two hours, and twenty-three minutes old, but he was also thirty-five years, seven months, three days, four hours, and thirty-seven minutes old, and together he and Newton Geiszler stood and read Newton’s first letter to him. “God,” Newton said, “I sound like such a loser. I wanted to impress you so bad.”

“You did.” Hermann ran his fingers down the letter and smiled. Newton had called him clever and fascinating and awesome, and Hermann thought he might’ve been half in love with him already. He folded the letter up. It felt strange to share something he cherished so deeply—so intimately—with another human being, even if it was the man who wrote it. “We’re drifting with a kaiju brain,” Hermann pointed out.

“We are,” Newton agreed. As if he had read Hermann’s mind (a terrible analogy—Newton quite literally _was_ reading his mind), he added, “Only a couple seconds have passed in our world, I think. Don’t worry. When I drifted—” His expression darkened somewhat. “Well. I saw a _lot_ , and you found me in, like, minutes.”

“Two minutes and forty-three seconds,” Hermann said. He had an excellent sense of time.

Newton looked at him strangely. Then, without warning, he flung himself at Hermann.

Hermann seized up—because they could not touch, because _touch_ meant Newton was gone forever, but— “We can touch here,” Newton laughed in his ear, hugging him tight, and Hermann laughed, too, in amazement. He could _feel_ Newton, he could hold Newton, he could _kiss_ Newton, and Newton was soft, Newton was warm, Newton was wonderful, Newton was everything, and Newton kissed him back.

The Anteverse loomed around them, blue and horrible and infinite, and—as dizzyingly as it began—it was over.

Hermann always had a delicate constitution.

“It’s not going to work,” he said, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his sweater.

 

* * *

 

Hermann Gottlieb was thirty-five years, seven months, three days, twelve hours, and three minutes old, and he relaxed on his bed, content with the knowledge that the world was—for the time being—safe. Newton—thirty-four years, eleven months, twenty-four days, thirteen hours, and twenty minutes old—relaxed a few short inches away from him, a pillow laid between their bodies to prevent any mishaps. His glasses were half-shattered, and he was smiling at Hermann. Hermann was smiling back. “You’re a dumbass,” Newton said affectionately.

“What?” Hermann said, smile slipping away.

“You broke up with me because you thought I was _tired_ of you?” Newton said.

“Er,” Hermann said. “Well. There were other factors. I thought—I thought you’d prefer—we can’t _touch_ , Newton.”

“You’ve mentioned,” Newton said. “I don’t care.”

“You could be with anyone else in the universe,” Hermann said. “Anyone else in the universe could touch you.”

“I don’t care,” Newton repeated.

“It was selfish of me,” Hermann said, “to have brought you back and kept you here—”

“Hermann,” Newton said. “I love you.”

This was the forty-second time Newton Geiszler had said this to Hermann Gottlieb in their brief time together. It did not cease to amaze Hermann Gottlieb.

Newton had been soft and warm in his arms in the drift, and his lips had been soft and warm against Hermann’s. Hermann knew it’d been fabricated, artificial—a facsimile of human contact, of what it should’ve felt like, pulled from their conjoined consciences—but it’d been intoxicating nonetheless. Newton was still smiling, lazily, his lips curved and pink and inviting. “I wish I could kiss you,” Hermann murmured.

“You will,” Newton said. “Eventually. We’re scientists. We’ll figure it out.” He shifted as close as the pillow between them would allow; his warm breath ghosted over Hermann’s face. Hermann did not doubt Newton’s words. “We have the time.”

Tomorrow, they would deal with everything else—the paperwork, the red that stained their irises, the questions that would come when someone inevitably linked Newt Schwartz (biologist of the apocalypse) to Newton Geiszler (infamously dead American tourist), perhaps Newton’s father, even—but not right then. Right then, Hermann laced the fingers of his left and right hands together (pretending that it was Newton’s hand he was holding), and Newton laced the fingers of _his_ left and right hands together (pretending it was Hermann’s hand he was holding), and as the two scientists smiled at each other and remembered their kiss, they felt it as vividly as they had in the drift. It was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then newt fixes it so they can touch and they kiss and live happily ever after the end
> 
> i thrive on comments! find me on tumblr at hermannsthumb, where i post other ficlets, and twitter at hermanngaylieb!


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